For pastors, the prostitute was thus both an auxiliary and a witness. She was poor and humiliated, but in a certain sense she took part in the struggle against vice. She was also its victim. She stood witness to the misery of the human condition. [41]

All preachers, Olivier Maillard and Michel Menot included, were obliged to explain that lust was illicit, contrary to what many people thought, would lead to many woes, and would weaken a mans energies and shorten his days. Menot’s attacks include shades of difference, however, and, like his predecessors, he distinguishes four sorts of lust: simple fornication, incest, sacrilege, and sodomy. In other words, when the sermon had ended, the hearer might have understood and remembered that lust was much more of a danger for the woman than for the man or for the clergy that for the laity; that fornication was not one of the gravest dangers and that God judged fornication much less severely than pride or avarice; and that it was excusable if it were not too frequently indulged in. And this during a period of moral reaction.

This is why intellectuals made such wide use of Augustine’s opinion: “Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will unsettle everything on account of lusts….This class of people is by its own mode of life most unchaste in its morals; and by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition.’ Furthermore, it is because the common good implies the existence of evil that Thomas Aquinas develops the principle of tolerance in his Summa. Thomas’s confessor, Ptolomy of Lucca, goes a good deal further: he popularizes the principle of the lesser evil by referring conjointly to Aristotle and to a gloss of Augustine. According to Aristotle, ‘if soldiers have no women, they abuse men’. The interlinear gloss of Augustine, which appeared during the 13th century and was often cited subsequently, says, ‘the sea and the sewer pit in a palace. Remove this sewer and the entire palace will be contaminated.’ This provided an authoritative reference of capital importance for anyone charged with the governance of a city. It justified public prostitution – vile as it was – allowed it to be established and to function, and promoted its practice to the status of a trade (ministerium).

The first mention of fornication in Thomas is in Ia IIAe. Quest. 10 art. 11; ‘God permits evils to be produced in the universe; he lets them remain for fear that if they were eliminated, greater goods would be [eliminated] as well, or worst evil might ensue.’[42]

Conjointly, an increasing number of voices were raised even in the bosom of the Church in favour of the marriage of priests, who were thought to be incapable of respecting their vow to chastity. The hierarchy resisted: however, since it was fully aware of the risks of celibacy and equally firm in its opposition to marriage for the clergy, concubinage, and unnatural acts, it admitted that clerical fornication with public prostitutes represented a lesser evil for ecclesiastical discipline.[43]

The Untold History of The White Races Cir. 700 – 1700 a.d.
585 pages 720 pictureswww.KickedOutofHeaven.com
Kicked Out of Heaven Vol. III is divided into 2 parts. The First part of this volume goes over The Catholic Church’s history during the Dark Ages & Medieval Times. These are a some of the things that are discussed: The Castrati (Castrated Boy Choir), Holy Blood & Organs, Jesus’s Holy Prepuce (Foreskin), The Penance & Anathema, The Fish Bishop, Saints that Levitate, The Incorruptible Saints, The Nun Manias, All Religious Holidays explained, The Heretics: The Luciferians, The Spanish Inquisition. The Second half of this book is a focus on the art of the times. These are the subjects reviewed: Monsters & Gargoyles, Castles & Knight Armory, More on Medicine & Magic, More on Werewolves, Demons & Hell, Over 100 Different Black Madonnas & Moorish Saints, The Catacomb Bone Churches, The Bejewelled Saints, Aliens, Astrology & Alchemy………………….